And I liked Looper and Inception, although I found Nolan's need to explain the "rules" of the film in intricate, somewhat clunky expositionary detail affected my enjoyment of the latter as an action film. I didn't think he handled it well.

Without wishing to turn this into a genre debate, I think something like Blood Diamond is more like Saving Private Ryan or Apocalypse Now or whatever. They are films where there's action scenes as part of the plot, but they're not "Action films", im the sense that they are not driven by high octane action sequences.

Action films basically only have plot to put the action into context. Lines of course will blur and lots of films could sit on the border, but yeah.

There probably are high brow action films though. I was talking pretentious guff with the whole high brow thing to be honest. All I was really saying is that just because some films aren't super stupid, you still don't have to treat them like they're proper high concept intellectual films.

LeoliansBro wrote:
But much as I enjoyed Looper, my unavoidable overanalysis means I can't unsee the fact that Bruce Willis is trying to save a future he's already erased by his actions and JGL is trying to kill someone he already won't turn into.

I read it differently.

BW is doing it for the woman he loves and JGL is doing it for the child he never got to be.

It's not a "me me me" film the way I see it. It's about the importance of love and parenting as silly as that might sound. I also didn't see it as a film with one timeline they loop around on but rather a film where multiple branches inter and affect one another. Hence the viscosity of changes. Much like in Galileos' Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson.

@LeoliansBro He's not being rational in the film. That might sound like a cop out but still.

As for the second bit it's about how time works. Not action A creates situation B that generates C but a big mess. LIke a river delta that is constantly shifting and sometimes creates a crescent lake etc etc.

So person A doing B doesn't mean he can't do F.

Changes upstream doesn't apear to have instant effect downstream and vice versa. So the "continuity errors" are sort of negated.

I dunno, I thought Blood Diamond was a bit smarter than you give it credit for. A lot of interesting questions get brought up between the action scenes, about compassion fatigue, the role of the press in the conflicts, corruption, life in refugee camps, child soldiers. Sure, the plot itself is still pretty simple, but that hardly disqualifies it from being smart and fairly highbrow as well.

Of course, Last King of Scotland is also absolute quality, but the issues are not all the same. And it's not an action film.

And speaking of action films that are about things, District 9. (Cue debate about whether it's action, sci-fi, sci-fi/action, whatever)

Yeah, I kind of agree with Tonka's take on continuity in Looper. PErhaps that's justa convenient way of ignoring the flaws, but it does make sense to me that's it's not a linear as Back to the Future action and consequence type stuff.

LeoliansBro wrote:
I am well aware that it might be me that is the one being unreasonable. But I will say one thing, or rather ask one question: in Looper, can you travel into the past and change things which alter the future, or not?